MAINTAIN YOUR HOMES!
LISTEN UP PEOPLE! We have encountered far too many clients, both selling and buying homes, who hit snafus or renege on contracts all due to lack of home maintenance. You cannot blame someone for not wanting to buy a home that is problem plagued before moving in. Time and time again sellers put their homes on the market and when it goes under contract, the home inspection will uncover COSTLY repairs that could have been avoided for minimal costs, had they just been proactive. Owning your own home can be a dream come true. It can also quickly turn into a nightmare if regular maintenance is overlooked.
Much like a car, the value you have worked so hard to establish in your home, can be significantly negatively impacted without regular maintenance. The choice is yours… spend a little to maintain your home now, or spend a lot more on costly repairs and subsequent resulting damage down the road.
If not for the money you’ll save, or for the purpose of selling your home, perform regular home maintenance for the safety and health of you and your loved ones! Some scary statistics…
Sometimes the difference between life and death of you or your loved ones is regular home maintenance. If maintained properly, your smoke detectors work to alert you and your family to get out of the house alive. Far too often we hear the results of the alternative on the nightly news. Here are a few sobering home safety statistics:
- 15,600 dryer fires occur each year resulting in property damage exceeding $75 million dollars. The leading cause? LACK OF MAINTENANCE!*
- 20,000 people are treated in hospital emergency rooms for injuries related to garage doors.*
- 15,260 injuries and 2660 deaths annually due to failure or problems with smoke alarms, sprinklers and fire extinguishers.*
- 38,300 reported home electrical fires including 120 deaths and 390 injuries associated with electrical wiring, circuit breakers, fuses and meters.* and **
- 49,200 heating equipment related home fires.**
- 14,000 deaths occur from radon each year, as estimated by the EPA.
* – Source: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission;
** – Source: National Fire Protection Association
If that was not enough, here are some more reasons to maintain your home:
- Pride in ownership and to have a beautiful, well maintained home.
- Protect the value of one of your largest, most important, lifetime investments/assets.
- Reduce family safety and health risks.
- Improve your home’s appearance and appeal.
- Peace of mind knowing all systems, equipment, and components are in good working order.
- Maximize your home’s sales potential; avoid being surprised by Home Inspection problems when you go to sell your home.
- Everything works as designed.
- Recommended by appliance, equipment, and system manufacturers; warranty protection.
- Save money and reduce the Total Cost of Home Ownership:
- Reduce energy consumption and expenditures (lower utility bills).
- Extend the life of home components, equipment and systems (deferred spending for replacement/repair).
- Eliminate avoidable repairs and failures (money that never has to be spent; 100% savings).
- Avoid the damages and repair consequences of equipment or system failures (the cost to repair damage caused by a failure often far exceeds the cost of replacing the failed equipment/ component; e.g.- the property damaged suffered due to a failed Hot Water Heater in a finished basement far exceeds the cost of the Water Heater replacement… sometimes by more than a hundred-fold).
- Repair costs will decrease (fewer failures, lower costs).
